Small cakes should be kept closely covered in stone jars. For large ones, you should have broad stone pans with close lids, or else tin boxes. All cakes that are made with yeast, should be eaten quite fresh; so also should sponge cake. Some sorts may be kept a week; black cake much longer.
[H] Hickory rods, spaddles, etc. can be obtained by bespeaking them at a turner's.
Prepare two pounds of currants by picking them clean, washing and draining them through a cullender, and then spreading them out on a large dish to dry before the fire or in the sun, placing the dish in a slanting position. Pick and stone two pounds of the best raisins, and cut them in half. Dredge the currants (when they are dry) and the raisins thickly with flour to prevent them from sinking in the cake. Grind or powder as much cinnamon as will make a large gravy-spoonful when done; also a table-spoonful of mace and four nutmegs; sift these spices, and mix them all together in a cup. Mix together two large glasses of white wine, one of brandy and one of rose water, and cut a pound of citron into large slips. Sift a pound of flour into one pan, and a pound of powdered loaf-sugar into another. Cut up among the sugar a pound of the best fresh butter, and stir them to a cream. Beat twelve eggs till perfectly thick and smooth, and stir them gradually into the butter and sugar, alternately with the flour. Then add by degrees, the fruit, spice and liquor, and stir the whole very hard at the last. Then put the mixture into a well-buttered tin pan with straight or perpendicular sides. Put it immediately into a moderate oven, and bake it at least six hours. When done, take it out and set it on an inverted sieve to cool gradually. Ice it next morning; first dredging the outside all over with flour, and then wiping it with a towel. This will make the icing stick.
ICING.--A quarter of a pound of finely-powdered loaf-sugar, of the whitest and best quality, is the usual allowance to one white of egg. For the cake in the preceding receipt, three quarters of a pound of sugar and the whites of three eggs will be about the proper quantity. Beat the white of egg by itself till it stands alone. Have ready the powdered sugar, and then beat it hard into the white of egg, till it becomes thick and smooth; flavouring it as you proceed with the juice of a lemon, or a little extract of roses. Spread it evenly over the cake with a broad knife or a feather; if you find it too thin, beat in a little more powdered sugar. Cover with it thickly the top and sides of the cake, taking care not to have it rough and streaky. When dry, put on a second coat; and when that is nearly dry, lay on the ornaments. You may flower it with coloured sugar-sand or nonparels; but a newer and more elegant mode is to decorate it with devices and borders in white sugar. These are put on with a syringe, moving it skilfully, so as to form the pattern. A little gum tragacanth should be mixed with this icing.